


A change in the weather

by the_irydioner



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_irydioner/pseuds/the_irydioner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I was praying that you and me might end up together..."</p>
<p>Modern AU. Rainy days have always meant a turn for the wrong was in sight for Anne, ever since her father's best friend and partner's tragic death. So, does Richard re-entering her life in a stormy evening mean more heartache, or her luck finally returning to her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rain and Meetings

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at fanfiction here, and was written first in Italian, so apologies if there are any syntax mistakes!  
> I also tend to be very descriptive, so this is probably excessively long...
> 
> So, this was basically an excuse to write rain-themed scenarios with my OTP :)  
> Should be a two-parter as soon as I finish translating it, and if the first chapter isn't completely awful...thoughts are welcome!

_Tic, tic, tic._

The ticking of the raindrops on the club’s windows had been insistent for hours now, drowning the noises of the traffic outside and with them Anne’s spirits, already shaken by her long working turn behind the counter.

She hadn’t always hated rain: she still remembered the endless afternoons she used to spend at home or at the Yorks’, when not even a replica of the Flood would have been able to keep the kids from the courtyard after finishing their homework. Rain, as it happened, tended to make everything twice as fun.

Trying to drench the girls from head to toe was bratty George’s favourite game, with Isabel, Anne’s older sister, being his usual chosen target. Edward, the eldest of the York brothers – who was supposed to look after the youngsters, but actually spent most of that time checking his Facebook or texting with one of his countless girlfriends – never ceased to tease him about “needing to stop trying to impress”; how could one ever think to impress a girl by squirting her, Anne couldn’t tell, but surely Bella wasn’t quite as annoyed by it as she tried to show. Oh, she could make a giant fuss over her ruined lovely dresses, but secretly Anne knew she was all too happy to be the centre of someone’s attention, and all the better if that someone was George York with his sly charming smile.

Anne’s favourite childhood playmate, instead, had always been quieter Richard, whose greatest love were the stories of battles and majestic knights he used to read out loud for her from his picture books; and whenever reading was not enough, hours still flew by as they would invent their own fairytales from each drawing on the book. When they chased each other under the rain like this, though, he didn’t hesitate and usually got the most soaked of all, as he tried to measure up with his fictional heroes and therefore felt the need to chivalrously protect Anne from his brother’s mischief.

“You’re too small to be a knight in shining armour, Dickon!” George would snigger. “And Annie isn’t pretty enough to be the princess…”

Richard always fell into the trap. “Anne _is_ pretty!” would be his spontaneous remark, making them both blush furiously while George’s infuriating grin only widened.

Anne was usually the first to recover. “No, you’re right George…anyway, I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be a knight too. Face me and fight!”

Then she would splash him too, and with George’s outrage started the real water fight.

The fun was such that they didn’t even fear risking one of Cecily York’s – the boys’ mother – legendary rebukes. 

“Anne? Anne, for God’s sake, don’t stay there daydreaming all evening! People are waiting to be served!”

Well, damn Catherine* for interrupting her only happy thoughts of the evening. Anne puffed, putting a rebel streak of blond hair aside from her sweaty forehead, and moved back to the clients waiting to place their orders by the counter. As she mixed drinks, the bland _tic tic_ of the rain outside dulled her senses even more than the faint background chatter in the club, and her thoughts drifted again to similarly rainy, but far less pleasant memories.

Since that disastrous stormy day of the airplane crash that had taken away the lives of Richard York sr., the boys’ dad, and his second son Edmund, rain had just never meant laughter again for Anne…

 

\------------------------------

 

It had been raining too at the Yorks’ funeral, a light, feather-like rain. Anne had thought it was as if the sky was crying instead of the bereaved family, wrapped up in a shocked silence for the suddenness of their loss: Cecily, who had to be her remaining children’s strength, and stoically strained to ban any emotion from her graceful face; Edward, only eighteen and now with the responsibility of administering his father’s firm fully on his young shoulders; George, his usually playful attitude replaced by a forlorn grimace.

Richard kept biting his lips, trying and miserably failing to hide his strangled sobs in a poor attempt to show the same strength as his older brothers.

Before courage left her, Anne had taken his hand for comfort.

Just when she had started to think she had been silly in doing so, she had felt Dickon squeezing it back tightly, and she hadn’t let him go.

 

 

It had been raining, years later, the day Isabel lost her first child.

It was a teenaged Anne who was alone in the house with her when it happened; Anne who had run at her sister’s screams, seen scarlet blood running down her legs; Anne who frantically called the ambulance, which arrived late after being caught in a giant traffic jam. All she could remember of the crazy ride to the hospital was the rhythmic rumbling of thunder and the cacophony of car horns outside, the deafening beeps of the medical equipment and Izzy’s pained cries.

There had been no cries from her tiny little nephew though, born still and blue even before reaching the building.

Her parents had arrived with George and were frantic with worry; George especially had soon become every nurse’s nightmare by trying to force his way into Isabel’s room, complaining there was no way he’d let them keep him from his own wife. Yes, Edward’s teasing had revealed itself truer than what any of them had suspected as children: George and Isabel’s wedding had been the delight of both families at the time…but there was no place for such joy in that moment.

Nobody was noticing Anne, curling in shock in the corner of the sitting room. She had found herself thinking that maybe all that rain had just washed her away, made her invisible – and she just hated herself for entertaining such selfish thoughts when all her worries should have been for Bella – when someone above her had murmured her name.

It was Richard, his curly mass of dark hair unmistakable, staring worriedly down at her balled form.

That just about doubled her astonishment. She hadn’t seen him in almost a year, since the moment Edward and her father had fought over the management of the company Dick Neville and his York deceased best friend and namesake had founded together. Of two Richards at the head of the firm, there were now none after Neville had furiously stormed out the head office on that fateful day, a rift widening between their families as well as himself and Ned.

“Richard? What are you doing here?”

That had indeed been the most idiotic question she could have asked him, the poor stillborn baby would have been nephew to the both of them; but Dickon had just smiled gently as he sat next to her.

“You comforted me when no one could pay attention to me, some time ago…I just wanted to return the favour.”

It had been him taking her hand this time; and as the doctors were reassuring George and the Nevilles on Bella’s condition, Anne had cried all her relief and piled up fright on his shoulder.

 

 

It had been raining on her wedding day.

Edouard Lancaster was handsome, rich, was son to her dad’s new, prickly French business partner – Marguerite Lancaster, the _she-wolf_ of the market, every financial office’s _tailleur_ -clad nightmare – and he’d always acted as the perfect gentleman with her during all of their engagement. Besides a not very loving and easy-going mother-in-law-to-be (a downright scary one to Anne, if she was honest), what was not to like?

And after all, don’t they say that rain on her wedding day brings a bride good luck?

Apparently not.

Anne had soon discovered it was frequent for Edouard to come home terribly frustrated after work, and therefore terribly needing to _release_ that frustration on the nearest thing – or, as it happened, the nearest person: her.

Complaining about it was never an option: the tight partnership with the _she-wolf_ was an anchor her father, now rival to his own once company, could not do without, and he surely couldn’t have taken having to restart his career once again, and this time with both York- and Lancaster-supporting investors opposing him, just because of her creating a scandal.

Not to mention, working as a PR for the Lancaster firm, Marguerite had become her own boss too. It was Anne’s duty to always be smiling, stylish, interesting, with a quick answer for everything, punctual, in short, perfect: Marguerite never settled for less, and in the rare occasions when Anne still hadn’t learnt how to hide the marks on her wrists or face well, her carbon eyes would stare at her disapprovingly, as if she were being purposefully negligent or disrespectful by letting them show.

Since bad weather seemed to bring only bad things in her life, to Anne it had made perfect sense then when a sudden heart attack had fatally stricken Richard Neville on a very sunny day; she probably would never stop mourning her father dearly, but with his death she had lost the only thread keeping her tied to the golden nightmare her life had become. If Marguerite had ever taught her anything, was to be resolute; so it was paradoxically thanks to her hellish mother-in-law that she finally plucked up the courage to ask and stand up for a divorce, all too knowing of what she would face: losing her job, and shutting herself almost all doors for the future with such an influent family as her enemy.

She wouldn’t have wanted to see the loft she had shared with Edouard again even if the court had assigned it to her: so she could also add “homeless” to her list of new awesome qualities. Could it go any worse?

Well, of course, since her dear mother, instead of helping, so kindly decided to _disown_ her, for “dishonouring the memory of her poor father by throwing away the brilliant future he had spent his last years of life building for her”.

Isabel had been her only remaining life buoy: and that’s how Anne had ended up there, drab like an average barmaid, serving dishes and cocktails behind the counter of _The White Rose_ , one of George’s countless multifaceted independent businesses in town, as her only means of independence.

 

\-----------------------------------

 

Now it was raining again, and she could only dread what this summer downpour would bring her this time.

Her sour musings were interrupted, though, by the loud jingle of the doorbell.

A group of completely drenched young men ran into the dry safety of the pub, laughing good-naturedly of their state.

“God, you look awful, Francis!”

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t look so bad if you hadn’t so kindly _broken_ my umbrella, Rob!”

The names were vaguely familiar to Anne, as coming out from a distant memory. _Idiots_ , she thought good-humouredly, smiling despite herself at hearing the infectious laugh following the second guy’s reply.

“I don’t think Jack and Dickon here are complaining half as much as you, Francis…” it was “Rob” again, in an amused tone.

“Of course they don’t! You wouldn’t hear Jack complaining even under torture, and Dickon’s good looks save him in whatever state he is…”

“Hey, hold on a minute!” a different voice chimed in. “You make me sound like a vain girl – I think you might be confusing me with my brother George…”

“Oh! So, you’re _not_ a vain girl? I didn’t notice you weren’t! Did you, guys?”

The rest of their loud, playful retorts, though, was lost to Anne at hearing the name _Dickon_. Her head snapped up, and it was indeed Richard at the entrance, whom she had thought never to see again, or at least never to be able to speak friendly with, ever since she had entered the Lancaster corporation and he had become the right-hand man to his brother, the man who’d given her father so many grievances.

“Her” Richard, her once childhood best friend and now not hers at all, a stranger and familiar all the same.

It was unmistakably him, green-grey eyes now darkened in the dim light of the pub, the same rare smile, all the more precious as he reserved it for few, lighting up his face as he playfully shoved Rob on the shoulder; his dark hair, still curly and unruly and now wet with rain and long enough to frame his face completely.

He wasn’t the quite skinny boy she remembered anymore, though. He could never be considered the handsomest in the family with such siblings as Edward and George, but now his build was as good as his athletic brothers’, if missing a little in height. Anne looked on as he pushed a strand of sticky hair away from his forehead, as they dripped a track of little droplets on the exposed skin of his neck. His slightly open shirt was gluey too and skin-tight thanks to the traitorous rain; and Anne just flushed violently in realizing she must have been ogling him unblinkingly for some minutes by now.

Her flush just deepened when she realized that, amidst her ponderings, Richard had finally turned towards the counter and was looking at her as well now.

A flash of surprised recognition sparked in his eyes, and as he turned to tell his mates something, Anne, dying of embarrassment, desperately searched for something, _anything_ , to pretend to be occupied with and distract herself. The little cleaning sponge was at hand, and so she decided that scrubbing the counter definitely couldn’t wait a moment longer and it needed her whole attention. She didn’t dare steal a glance in his direction, while trying to calm the sudden surge of emotion within her.

“If you keep rubbing so hard, I fear you will eat into the counter…Anne.”

Anne started: Richard was right in front of her now, alone on the other side of the abused counter, on his lips the half-smile she had always adored since she was small. She could feel the red on her cheeks creeping up again like the traitor it was, but stubbornly fought it back. She just couldn’t flush at everything like a schoolgirl at her first crush!

(Though, if she was honest… _he_ had probably been her first crush. Damn.)

“Richard! Is it…is it really you?”

 _God, if a Stupid Question Award existed, I’d have won it countless times by now,_ she instantly thought; but he just laughed good-naturedly. “Well, I might not look my best…” he glanced embarrassedly at his drenched clothes, “but yes, that’s still me.”

“Oh, no, you look fine…more than fine, actually…” Anne spoke, before realizing she had thought out loud and wanting to sink in a hole for the embarrassment.

_Good God, no blushing, Anne…well, maybe it would be a bit easier if I stopped embarrassing myself…_

“Well, thank you” Richard chuckled again, shyly lowering his gaze for a moment. “I would’ve never thought to see _you_ here instead,” he added, glancing at her from under his dark lashes. “Are you okay, Anne?”

There was sincere worry in his frown, and Anne would have liked to fake a smile and answer him that yes, everything was perfectly fine, she was just tired of working in the financial field but her life was absolutely under control...but she found she couldn’t lie to him.

She went for irony. “Oh, if you don’t count being fired and your ex-boss preventing anyone else to employ you, everything is fine. Bella always says I should be thankful she and George are offering me a place to stay in and something to do here…I suppose it could go worse.”

She tried a strained smile, but Richard’s eyebrows stayed furrowed. “Your boss…as for your mother-in-law? She treats you like that and your husband just sits and watch? What kind of a man is he?”

Anne was startled in hearing Edouard’s all-too-abusive presence, even in her memories, recalled to her, and by the person she would have least wanted to discuss him with. Her wedding had been a public affair, so it wasn’t strange he knew; but she wondered how he couldn’t guess how wrong it had ended just by seeing her now, having to work as a waitress and to depend on her sister and brother-in-law. He had just probably thought aloud like she had before; but she was suddenly, irrationally angry that he had forced that grievous topic on her.

“ _Ex_ -mother-in-law and _ex_ -husband,” she acidly specified. “Yeah, I’m not even close to thirty and I’m already divorced and my career is finished before even starting. Now you can tell me how sorry you are, and we can move on to better things to talk about?”

Richard went silent, and she feared she had been too harsh. She couldn’t blame him for her bad luck, they had just found each other again…and the very first thing she did was pushing him away. She just had a way of ruining things, didn’t she? Maybe Bella was right in telling her so whenever they argued…

“I can’t.”

She looked at him, uncomprehending. “You can’t what?”

Richard hesitated for a moment, eyes boring into hers, and then stretched his arm on the counter, covering her hand, still closed on the little sponge, with his. His fingers were still cold and wet from the rain.

Then why did she feel like suddenly burning up as they touched?

“I’m sorry for your job and your home, more than I can say…but I have never lied to you, Anne, even when we were kids. And I would be if I told you that I’m sorry you left him. He didn’t deserve you at all if he treated you like this.”

It was incredible the way he still managed to soothe her like this, even after years spent walking on parallel lives, never crossing.

“Oh, I see” she muttered. “I wonder if I will ever find someone who “deserves me”, then.”

Richard’s lips curved again in that little inviting half-smile of his, and Anne was amazed at how rapidly the mood of their conversation kept shifting.

“Don’t you have someone in mind?” He looked at her as if she knew the answer, and she was sure nothing this time could save her from furious blushing as she fumbled for words to answer him with.

“Oi! Dickon! Are you set on spending the whole night flirting or will you order drinks for us too before it’s closing time?”

Both Richard and Anne exploded in laughter. A mental note to thank that Jack Howard for saving her from further embarrassment with his grumpy intervention…

Later, while serving the friends their drinks – and finally recognizing Francis Lovell, Richard’s inseparable best mate since primary school – Anne smiled to herself in seeing Richard toying with the small white origami dragon she’d quickly made out of a napkin and put onto the tray. He kept stealing little curious glances at her, as she’d hoped. When they were children, origami-making had been another favourite game of theirs, and the dragon had always been Dickon’s favourite, as he could pretend to fight it like a valiant knight should.

Now, she had purposefully folded one of its wings in the wrong way, where she had scribbled down her number before courage left her. She hoped he would be tempted to re-fold it and so he would see it; and she knew he had when, while tidying up the club later for closing, her phone buzzed with a MMS from an unknown number.

She opened it, and she couldn’t help smiling at the picture on her display: a little green origami frog on a floor, with a big black hound scrutinising it curiously. Frogs were her own favourite origami: you could make them jump a little if you pushed on their paper backs, and she remembered making endless pranks on Isabel that way.

The message underneath just made her smile widen:

_Looks like Gareth** likes paper frogs – just like someone I know…_

_I’m sorry for upsetting you, before. It was nice seeing you again._

_Sleep well. R xxx_

So maybe, just maybe, rain wasn’t so evil after all; maybe it could still bring back to her some of the good luck deserting her for so long?

 

 

 

 

 

Additional notes:

* Catherine is one of the girls Anne works with as a kitchen maid while she's in hiding from George at Aldgate Inn in _The Sunne in Splendour_.

** In _Sunne_ , Gareth is Richard's wolfhound.


	2. Rain and Kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here goes the fluff! (well, at least until Anne sees something and gets it ruined for herself...or does she? ^_^)
> 
> I think I like the first part better, but I hope you do like this nonetheless...:)

 

Of course, she was wrong.

Should she be surprised, really? She could say bad luck and heartache were her most intimate friends by now; and like all very good friends, they had developed their own peculiar way of greeting her.

Meeting Richard again during one of her legendarily unlucky stormy days should have made her wary; but she had chosen to ignore the signs, because for once in her life she was just completely, blissfully happy again.

And things had seemed to prove her just right.

 

 

\-----------------------------------------

 

Richard had cheerfully texted her again the next morning, and they had kept writing to each other all day long, as long as his office duties and her umpteenth job-searching mission in town – another failed one – allowed them. Her surprise had been even greater – and a very pleasant one – in seeing him peeking out from the door of the club at a late hour, still clad in suit and tie and looking tired, but with a ready smile and eyes attentively fixed on her. The few clients at that hour allowed them to pleasantly chat, his drink nestled between them on the counter.

Anne had feared the long period that had separated them would make conversation awkward and difficult, but she had soon discovered it was quite the opposite. Both were eager to fill in the gaps in each other’s lives, and hours flew by, one episode after the other; and the next evening, and the one after, Richard was there again, stopping by on his way home from work. Whenever his drink ended and it was time to part, it was always too soon.

Anne had thus learned of his and Ned’s battles in managing their firm; of how George had dropped all responsibility on their shoulders and attended to his own private businesses, tired of “being bossed around by _King_ Edward”, as he put it, but played at being offended each time he wasn’t consulted for important decisions; or of the trouble they were having with her old mother-in-law Marguerite’s last minion, Ed Somerset, trying to grab shares of their company to secretly hand them over to the _she-wolf_ , who had always eyed their enterprise greedily. Of the sneaky Stanley brothers, each a member of the Lancaster or York management board, and supporting one corporation’s strategies or the other’s as the wind of economics blew; or of Ned’s panic attacks every time their mother visited the offices. In truth, they weren’t much in fear of her judgement, but more of the guaranteed poison-laced verbal duels between her and Liz, his blindingly blonde personal assistant, not to mention wife and mother of his three daughters: Mary, Cecily and Bessie, who adored her uncle Dickon with the energy of a thousand suns.

Anne, even if she had to admit she was probably the most dazzling woman she’d ever met, had never really liked Liz Rivers, as Edward’s unashamed favouritism in assigning positions in the firm to her relatives had caused the break-up with her father; but the thought of having Cecily York as a mother-in-law was almost as scary as that of Marguerite Lancaster. In that, at least, she could sympathize.

Now, a fourth baby was apparently on its way, and Richard was amused in recalling his brother’s ardent prayers for it to be a boy this time, because “living surrounded by all these women is a real nightmare, Dickon; you should enjoy your freedom while you can!”

Anne’s everyday life recaps instead touched upon Isabel’s expensive tastes, and the endless shopping marches she dragged her into, leaving her waiting for hours while she tried on every single article in her chosen shop before finally picking one – followed by the unfortunate shop assistants’ relief, and George’s anguish for his abused credit card – and making her carry all the bags. As if she were her lady-in-waiting!

Marguerite’s all-too-known tempers at work, which had taught her more French swearwords than all the typical silly searches on the dictionary she’d made as a student, were also a topic she could finally smile about. She never spoke of Edouard, though, and whenever she heard about his York namesake’s big happy family she could feel, deep down inside, a small twinge of envy.

But nothing could really undermine the joy of those moments spent with Richard telling each other stories, their stories, a lot like when as kids they had excitedly shared their favourite characters’ last adventures.

She had started to wait for the moment of the day she would see his head of dark curls popping out behind the counter, and that temporary job she hated suddenly looked a lot more alluring. She used to go out to the _White Rose_ with the forlorn face of one who has no other option, whereas now the thought of it more and more frequently managed to drag smiles out of her.

The change hadn’t escaped her sister’s sharp eye. “Mind sharing what makes you so suddenly happy?”

Anne never replied, but her smile just couldn’t help growing wider.

 

 

The week after, Francis too – now Dickon’s neighbour as well, she had discovered – had dropped by again, looking for a lost keychain he’d searched for everywhere. Anne was sorry to tell him that no one had found anything while cleaning in the past few days.

“I’m sure it will pop out somewhere. At least you didn’t have to cross half of the city to come looking for something that wasn’t even here,” she had tried to cheer him up.

“Uh, actually home’s pretty far from here; Dickon and I find it more convenient to live near the offices. I know this neighbourhood well though, I used to live here. I miss it sometimes.” He had smiled friendlily at her. “Thank you anyway, Anne. I’ll see you around, I guess!”

So…Richard wasn’t _at all_ on his way home when he came visiting her from work as he had told her. The familiar treacherous red had spotted her cheeks at the thought that he would go all the way to the other side of town after a tiring day at work just to see her.

When she had tried to approach the topic later that evening, joking about George surely being very happy that his little brother spent so much time coming and going from his club, Richard had just smiled.

“I don’t do it for him.”

He had been looking at her in that intensely mysterious way of his again, and Anne had caught the first excuse to take refuge in the kitchen, suddenly needing more air to breathe.

 

 

In the following weeks he had never missed what had become their daily _rendez-vous_ but once.

That evening, Anne had just kept repeating to herself, like a personal mantra, that she couldn’t claim all his attention for herself, but couldn’t help being slightly disappointed, and showing it.

“Missing your lover-boy?”

Vèronique, her fellow waitress with French origins – thankfully, those and her slight accent were the only things she had in common with Anne’s ex-in-laws – had given her the clinical eye, and couldn’t stop grinning in amusement.

“He’s not my lover-boy, Nikki! We’ve just been knowing each other since learning how to walk. Whatever gave you that idea?”

As if having known him for a lifetime was any good reason not to fall in love with him… _hold on a minute!_ Since when was she in love with him now?

“Hmm, maybe the fact that tonight you’re all tense and your head keeps snapping up at every client that comes in?”

Richard had been instantly forgiven, anyway, when the next day, with a mock-bow, he had presented her with a little white origami rose made from a spare paper sheet he’d stolen from the office. Anne’s face must have betrayed how much she had appreciated the little gesture, because since then he had taken up bringing her one every day. Anne had kept them all with care, and had made a centrepiece for Isabel and George’s living room out of them, so this way she could always see them when crossing the room to go out.

That, too, had arisen suspicious glances from Bella.

“He should make you red ones,” had been Vèronique’s cheerful comment. But truth was, red was bright but was Marguerite and her son’s favourite colour; while white was the colour of innocence, and all but reminded her of Richard and their carefree childhood memories together, where their origami tradition came from. So she preferred her small white roses, and smiled to herself, wondering if Richard intended for her to view them the way she did.

In those last summer days, it had rained next to little.

 

 

\------------------------------------------

 

Now it was autumn, and the sky was gloomy again over Anne’s head as she hurried towards the _White Rose_ , but in her haste she didn’t have the chance to notice. Catherine’s frantic call in which she had desperately asked her to exchange their working turns for the day – her panicky tone from the other end of the line, overwhelmed by background cries from her little horde of younger siblings, had seemed to confirm an emergency was in order – had caught her off guard, and she was unbelievably late.

A part of her was a little upset she would have to miss her usual evening encounter with Richard this time; but maybe she could make something good out of her changed schedule, too. Why not surprise him and be the one to wait for him to come out of his office, for once? Yes, she could definitely do that!

The idea extracted a fleeting smile out of her, as she flung herself in the kitchen, out of breath but in a renewed bright mood.

Vèronique’s expression in seeing her oddly went straight to alarm.

“Anne! What are you doing here? You never have the lunch turn!”

“Cat asked me to take her place,” Anne replied, guessing her friend’s anxiety as due to her gigantic lateness, and feeling even worse about it. “I’m so sorry, I really learned about it last minute, I came here as fast as I could! Are there so many people in?”

A tray already filled with two dishes for table eight, one of the more elegant, secluded tables, caught her attention. “I’m taking care of this,” she volunteered, determined to earn forgiveness for her delay, but was stunned in seeing the panic on her friend’s face grow even more at that.

“Better not, Annie…I think you’d be more needed at the counter…”

But Anne had already snatched the tray up, and flashed her a playfully offended look. “Oh, come on, I may not look my best after racing all the way through here, but I can’t be bad-looking at the point you’d be ashamed of me serving at the tables!”

She shook her head to herself while making her way to the tables. What the hell was wrong with Nikki today?

And then she looked up from her tray to her destination, and suddenly understood exactly what her friend hadn’t wanted her to see, and froze to the spot.

At table eight, sipping quietly from the glass of wine she was holding with one hand, and absent-mindedly toying with her cross-shaped pendant with the other, was sitting Meg Beaufort, as usual impeccably elegant in her reddish _tailleur_ and austere hairstyle.

Memories from when the freelancer had worked for the Lancasters came back to her mind, and pleasant they most surely weren’t. She remembered being quite disquieted by her all-too-fervent constant commendation of Marguerite’s tight iron fist on her company, not to mention the never-ending praises to her perfect darling son Henry; but most of all, she had managed to freak the whole staff out with her fanatical belief she was on a godly mission to raise the Lancaster corporation to greatness, and her consequent haughty behaviour with everyone else. From her self-satisfied expression now, though, she had clearly found someone showing her some interest; and that someone was the very last person she would expect to be in her company…and the very last person she wanted to see with her.

At the other side of the small table there was Richard.

Anne told herself she must be wishfully imagining a slight tension in his posture, because he was smiling pleasantly, deep in conversation; and there was no way he could be missing how miss Beaufort was sitting at the table all pushed out towards him, and the predatory look in her dark eyes that made her stomach churn in irrational jealousy. She gave an internal scream when, just as she had put down her glass, Meg laid her hand on his, while whispering something she couldn’t hear, and Richard didn’t pull back, just studying her with an expression she couldn’t read. The same gesture that had felt somehow so intimate, so _theirs_ already that evening, making her skin tingling…

She couldn’t look anymore.

She was aware that the tray and all its contents had slipped from her suddenly limp hands only when their terrible crash on the floor hit her ears. She vaguely registered a whirl of alternatively alarmed or annoyed faces around her – Meg Beaufort’s surely belonging to that second category since her clumsy intervention had interrupted her; Richard’s, she didn’t want to see at all.

Without a word, Anne just turned and ran, bolting for the door of the pub and furiously throwing it open, uncaring of the chief-waiter’s indignant protests. To hell that damn excuse for a job, to hell George’s guaranteed wrath when he’d learn she had made such a show in public. What was the point in trying to start again, if all that was waiting for her was always new disappointment and hurt?

God, Richard was an _idiot_. Meg Beaufort was eight years older than him, had a son – she wouldn’t dare imagining how spoiled… she was ancient, ugly and fanatical, and everyone knew it…

No, truth was, she was the real idiot: the Beaufort woman was a successful freelancer, mother to a seemingly perfect son, sharp and intelligent, that she couldn’t deny…why should Richard have preferred a girl with only the ashes of her failures within her hands?

Women with younger husbands were even becoming mainstream recently...

The first droplets of rain started falling down on her from the livid sky, and she found herself laughing bitterly.

Rain. Always blasted rain’s fault. She really should have known better by now, that meeting him again under such weather that day wasn’t to end well, not for her…

“Anne?”

His unsteady voice behind her, cracked with heavy breathing from his running after her, froze her frantic walk to nowhere.

“Richard, go away, please.” She wouldn’t turn around; she wouldn’t have him see her on the verge of tears…

“Anne, please…”

“Leave me alone!” Her voice was shaking badly, and she was sure that if she stayed a minute more near him she would break down. She tried resuming her wandering escape on the sidewalk, but Richard was quicker, and caught her by the arm; and, suddenly, it wasn’t him anymore she was seeing, but Edouard, dragging her along by that very arm every time he had to “release his stress”.

She panicked. “Let me go! Richard, let me go!”

Richard flinched away as if burned, and immediately let her go at her sudden paleness.

“Forgive me.”

Anne was motionless before him, head turned down in one last, poor attempt to hide from him the tears that had started to flow on her cheeks, mingling with the growingly intense rain. Seeing her like this was heartbreaking, and all the more in knowing he had been the main cause of her distress.

He sighed deeply. “Anne, it’s not what you think it is…”

Anne managed a croaky laugh between the tears. “Oh, I suppose it’s my fault, after all. I should’ve learnt by now never to expect anything…”

“Anne, miss Beaufort just wanted to talk to me about a contract for our company.”

Anne’s head snapped up at that, disbelieving and doubly hurt that he could think her so gullible; but she was met only by honesty, worry and maybe a tad of embarrassment in his eyes.

“I swear to you,” he insisted seriously. “I didn’t even know she wanted to meet here for lunch until this morning. I guess…she wanted to positively surprise me by choosing my brother’s place. But truth is…it didn’t feel right to be there without you. Not anymore. I was nervous all the time.”

“Oh, I’m sure miss Beaufort thinks a lot about _surprising_ you. And about ways you could _respond_ to her surprises,” Anne retorted, voice hard. “But you don’t really mind being the centre of her attentions, do you? And how could you? A successful businesswoman like her? While I…”

She shook her head sadly. “I’ve been a fool to assume…”

“No, that was I.”

Anne risked another look at his face, and he looked guilty now. “I don’t want to lie to you,” he spoke again, searching for words. “Miss Beaufort has been paying me…well, _special attention_ for some time now. The contract would have been very convenient to Edward, and so I thought…I thought not discouraging her for the moment couldn’t be that bad if it helped me secure it for him.”

He was looking at her with regretful eyes. “But clearly, I made a very bad investment there, because now I’m losing much more than what I could possibly hope to gain…”

Hesitating, he touched his fingers to hers comfortingly, and Anne could hear his little relieved exhale when she didn’t pull away from his tentative touch, too numb and tied up in the knot of messy emotions he could stir in her.

“Anne, I am sorry. I had promised myself, after thoughtlessly reminding you of bad things that night, that I would never cause you hurt again…but I’m not doing a very good job, am I?”

Despite herself, that forced a ghost of a smile on her, as she shook her head in response and glanced at him again from under her wet lashes. They both looked positively drenched, hair dishevelled and clothes dripping, as the rain kept falling around them.

The hint of a smile flickered on Richard’s lips too, as he took in their appearance. “Seems all I’ve managed here is to get us all soaked like when we were kids, instead…”

“But we are not those kids anymore.” Anne’s voice turned bittersweet. “I am not the little girl you knew, Richard…the one who didn’t want to be a princess but a knight, and to live her own adventures.”

She would never tell him that she also wanted to be a knight then because _he_ did.

She hung her head sadly. “The only “adventures” I’ve lived have taught me I can’t trust anyone, not even myself…”

“Yet I can still see that girl.”

He took her hand more firmly this time, making her look at him again through her teary eyes. “I don’t know everything you’ve been through…and my greatest regret will always be not being there for you, then. But I see you never giving up, and that’s something that requires courage…just as being a knight does. And I admire you for that, Anne.”

His eyes were bright with affection; and that at last sent the shaking control Anne had desperately tried to build during all of that conversation crumbling like a house of cards, and she collapsed into his arms, burying her face into his chest and feeling him lightly closing his arms around her.

They stayed like this for a moment, the insistently ticking drops the only sound surrounding them, as everyone had already scrambled to get home or to shelter but them, two idiots under the rain. With his heartbeat as frantic as her own drumming in her ears, Anne wasn’t feeling cold at all though, despite being soaked to the bone, and for the first time in what seemed a lifetime, in Richard’s arms she felt safe.

When she felt him entwining their hands and gently start to swing them around, she raised a puzzled look to him. “Richard, what…”

“Shh.” Richard laughed softly of her astonishment, and kept guiding her to a slow dance, heavy rain as their only rhythm.

“Richard! We’re in the middle of the street!”

“We’re _the only ones_ in the middle of the street,” he corrected. “I should think people usually wouldn’t like arguing under the rain like us…”

Truth was, even amidst the most bustling crowd, Anne wouldn’t have minded in the slightest. There was only Richard, and their bodies so foreignly, achingly close, soothingly lulling each other as they span softly.

“Why did you do that?” The question spontaneously raised to her lips as their dance stopped, and Richard let her go almost reluctantly.

His lips curved again into his famous half-smile that took her breath away. “Why d’you think?”

Oh, how she hadn’t missed the familiar, betraying heat on her cheeks. She was all too aware of how the mood of their conversation had shifted so completely all over again, and of how impossibly close they still were, feeling his light huff on her skin as he shivered.

“Maybe...we should find shelter too, now” she whispered, her gaze dropping shyly, eluding the dangerous question he had given her for answer. “You’re shivering.”

Richard laughed softly. “I think it’s a little late to remedy that.”

She felt a pang of guilt for her earlier scene now. “I just make things a whole lot messier, don’t I?”

“Well, let’s see” he said, head tilting as if in thought. “An agreement ruined, my suit irreparably drenched, and a probable cold on the way…I guess you do.” He was smiling at her. “But maybe it was all just worth it.”

His grin was infectious, and Anne found herself smiling, too, for real this time. “Edward will be furious,” she insisted anyway, glancing at him remorsefully still.

“Hmm, probably” Richard conceded, but didn’t look gloomy in the slightest. “But I know how to make him forgive me, I think.”

She looked at him quizzically, waiting.

“I’ve heard corridor voices at work saying there would be needing of a good new PR, and maybe I happened to find him one…”

Anne’s heart thumped in her chest. “No!” she exclaimed, incredulously. He could never mean…her?

But Richard just smiled at her and nodded. “If she accepts, that is…”

“Oh, Richard!” She threw her arms around his neck, as happiness as she’d almost forgotten it existed flooded her in a blinding wave. She would be able to work in the company that had originally cost her father so many sacrifices, and know that she would make him proud; she could take up the job she liked again, and not depend on Isabel and George’s moods anymore; most of all, she would be working alongside Richard and could, no, _would have to_ see him everyday. Considering, the prospect of having to face Liz Rivers’ highly probable enmity for having snatched that position from one of her endless relatives seemed a totally insignificant price to pay.

“Richard, I can’t believe it! I don’t know how can I ever thank you enough for this!” she laughed ecstatically.

“Hmm…let me think. Ah, yes.”

He looked at her, and in his eyes irony gradually left way again to that foreign expression that made Anne’s skin burn without even needing touch.

She heard him whispering, barely audible over the splashing rain. “I might have an idea about that…”

Anne found herself catching her breath in anticipation; and, as he leaned down and captured her lips with his own, anything else just faded for her, and suddenly she found she could finally name that strange new feeling blossoming inside her.

Desire.

She had learnt to view rain as her personal harbinger of doom: a violent, sudden streak, that’s how it was always like for her. But now, as Richard kissed her, and kissed her, and took her breath away, it occurred to her for the first time that rain was also the very thing farmers waited for after the sowing time; that which made life possible again on a burnt-down soil. That it brought new beginnings.

And, as she responded to his kisses with the same passion, she thought that, from then on, she was finally ready to see it that way.

With Richard in her life, she would never need fear other storms.


End file.
